In a semiconductor manufacturing process, generally, circuit patterns such as of IC elements are formed on one surface or obverse surface of a wafer first, and then a back grinding step is carried out in which the other, reverse surface of the wafer is ground (i.e. back grinding) to reduce the wafer to a predetermined thickness. Prior to the back grinding step, a protective adhesive tape is applied to the obverse surface of the wafer in order to protect this surface from contamination and damage due to grinding dust and the like.
In a conventional apparatus for applying the protective adhesive tape to the wafer surface, a wafer transport mechanism takes one wafer at a time out of a cassette placed in a predetermined position and delivers the wafer to a positioning mechanism. After the positioning mechanism centers the wafer and sets an orientation flat in position, the wafer transport mechanism transfers the wafer to a tape applying mechanism which applies the protective adhesive tape to the obverse surface of the wafer. Subsequently, the wafer transport mechanism stores the wafer in a predetermined cassette.
After a back grinding treatment, a remover adhesive tape having a stronger adhesion than the protective adhesive tape is applied to the outer surface of the protective adhesive tape adhering to the wafer surface. The remover tape is then pulled up to remove the protective tape from the wafer surface.
In a conventional apparatus for removing the protective adhesive tape from the wafer surface, a wafer transport mechanism takes the wafers having undergone the back grinding treatment, one at a time, out of a cassette placed in a predetermined position and delivers each wafer, after position setting, to a tape removing mechanism for removing the protective adhesive tape from the wafer surface. Then the wafer transport mechanism stores the wafer stripped of the protective adhesive tape in a predetermined cassette.
In conventional practice, as noted above, the process of applying the protective adhesive tape to the wafer surface and the process of removing the protective adhesive tape therefrom are carried out by independent and separate apparatus.
However, a large space is required for installing the two types of apparatus for separately carrying out the protective tape applying process and the protective tape removing process as in the prior art. This gives rise to the problem of high equipment cost as well.